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Mystagogy - Thean Evening Prayer

9/4/2016

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Last night was a turning point for me: for the first time, I brought my ministry as a Thean priestess out of the privacy of my family's house church and into the public realm, leading Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace in Phoenix.

My vision for Thean Evening Prayer was simple: it would be an intimate gathering for those who identify as women to pray together to God in their own (female) voices using feminine images for God and imagining God in relationship to Creation through a feminine, feminist lens.

When I arrived, my dear husband helped me arrange the space the way I wanted it, and then he departed so I could pray before others arrived. At 5:00, the time when prayer was set to begin, I was the only person in the room. I continued to pray, and as I prayed, I was surprised by the awareness that I actually wasn't alone--I was in the company of thousands of generations of women, women who had come before me, who had refused to be silenced or disempowered by oppressors, women who had imagined themselves and their God the way they chose, women who had loved, created, mentored and empowered girls and women within their influence. All their efforts, all their willingness to stand up for themselves, all their willingness to make a difference when they were told to shrink and be quiet--all of that energy had culminated in this moment, this hour, in which I was able to embrace my public ministry as a spiritual leader, a Thean priestess, a woman who wouldn't settle for the oppression that would seek to rein me in.

I knew going into the night that several women who wanted to pray with me were out of town. I knew also that several women who had wanted to pray with me had something come up at the last minute. I prepared to pray with my cloud of witnesses. I waited. Then a familiar face arrived, a woman who had prayed with me at our former Episcopal parish in Tempe, a woman who was preparing to lead her own spiritual circle for women. We hugged, we talked for a few minutes, I showed her around the rooms of Pathways of Grace, and eventually we settled into our seats to pray. I sounded the singing bowl four times. We stood, and I intoned a invitatory that I had learned years ago at my Roman Catholic parish in Cleveland, the same parish that ignited my love for liturgy: Let my prayer arise like incense in your sight, the lifting of my hands a sign of trust in you, O God. She joined with me in singing, and we sang it several times, letting the words soak into the space and ourselves.

We prayed the psalms next--Psalm 141, from which the invitatory came, and then a series of other psalms. Between each psalm there was a pregnant, full silence. At one point, I held my breath in between verses to keep my voice from breaking and tears from falling. Next time--next time I will let them break and fall.

At the conclusion of the psalms, we moved to the homily. I explained that in the Christian (and particularly Benedictine) tradition, Saturday night evening prayer was a big event, because it was the vigil for Sunday, the most important day of the Christian week. Saturday evening prayer was therefore when a homily was given, at least in communities that prayed together the liturgy of the hours every day. I noted that the homily would traditionally be given by the presider in top-down fashion, the presider imparting (his) reflections as seeds to be planted in the hearts of those around (him). Then I explained that in the case of Thean Evening Prayer, the homily was open to every person present, because a key Thean belief is that every (woman) has deep wisdom to share. So we shared the homily based on phrases from the psalms that had particularly resonated with us. Our homily was a mutual conversation in which we listened to one another and sounded/heard our own voices, recognizing that Thea's voice resounded through each of us.

I don't know how much time passed--time felt as though it was suspended, but I know from the content of the conversation that it must have taken a while. When the homily had reached an end, I turned to the next portion of evening prayer: the anointing. A bottle of oil stood on the little altar before us. I removed the glass stopper and poured a small portion of it into a glass bowl, inviting my praying partner to partake of it. I spoke of olive oil as an ancient healing balm, but I also spoke of it as the stuff with which royalty, priests, and prophets were anointed. To partake of scented oil is a sign not only of healing, but of empowerment and authority, specifically the power and authority to speak and act as one deems fit and wise. I said that it was particularly poignant to anoint the parts of ourselves for which we seek wise power and authority: the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the nose, the hands, the heart. My prayer partner and I dipped our fingers in the oil and rubbed the rose and clove scents into our skin, and then prayed Psalm 45 from the Thean Psalter, which included verses like, "You, a woman, are among the wise ones; grace flows from your lips," "Your leadership shall endure, for you love goodness and reject unkindness," and "Thea anoints you with the oil of gladness."

Thus empowered, we prayed together for those all around us, and lifted up personal prayers of our own. Then we stood and prayed a modified version of the Lord's Prayer called "Our Mother," written by Miriam Therese Winter of herchurch in San Francisco. We concluded with a collect prayer and this blessing:

May Thea bless us with courage,
guide us with her unrelenting love,
and empower us to answer her sacred call. Amen.


Our time together was not over--we stood, moved to the other side of the room, and talked over a small spread of food and bubbly water I had brought to share. We talked about our experiences, our faith, our friends, our leadership, our children, and our lives. We talked and talked until suddenly it was nearly 7:00--between the two of us and the cloud of witnesses that surrounded us, we had spent the two hours for which I had reserved the space.

I feel full: full of gratitude, full of joy, full of wisdom, full of holy power. This gathering was and wasn't about me. It was about me as a woman who has been on a journey all her life to arrive at the moment of taking up her life's vocation. It was about every woman who has ever done the same or sought to do the same. It was about every young girl who is figuring out who she wants to be, and it is about countless generations of women still to come who will change and lead this world for the better, overcoming oppressions and embracing who they see in the mirror as living icons of the Holy One.

For a free e-copy of the Thean Psalter, send me a note with your e-mail address. If you'd like a print copy, you can send $10 and your name and address via PayPal to me at lifeloveliturgy at gmail dot com. If you self-identify as a woman and would like to take part in future gatherings of Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace, we meet every first Saturday of the month at 5:00, and you can RSVP on the Pathways of Grace meetup.com page.
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Who is an icon of you?

6/2/2016

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In my prayers today, I came across Psalm 15, which asks an important question:

Psalm 15
 
Thea, who is an icon of you?
   Who reveals your holy Body?
 
Each of us—whether blameless or guilty,
   whether she speaks the truth from her heart or deceives;
 
Whether there is guile upon her tongue;
whether she offers evil or kindness to her friend;
   whether she heaps generosity or contempt upon her neighbor;
 
Whether she has sworn to do no wrong
   or makes a vow and then takes back her word.
 
We are, each of us, icons of you,
  because we are your living Body, broken, holy, and ever healing.
 
What a marvel, that you should knit us together in your love,
   sustaining us for love’s sake alone.
 
Blessed be Thea, our author and our sacred self,
   now and forever. Amen, amen.

Picture
The Creation Song by Shiloh Sophia McCloud / www.shilohsophiastudios.com
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31

1/31/2015

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Thea,
you write dreams
as holy icons,
sacred meeting
between me and you.
Wander through the valleys
of my dreamscape this night
and I will meet you face to
veiled face.
Amen.
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Spirit Whispers: Philadelphia 11

7/29/2014

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The Philadelphia 11, July 29, 1974
On this Feast of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, another celebration is underway: the fortieth anniversary of the ordination of the Philadelphia 11, the first women to be ordained in the Episcopal Church.

I am grateful for God's prophetic call on the lives of these women. I am grateful for their obedience to God--which manifested as disobedience to the unjust, unholy policies of their church.

I am grateful that these women paved the way for other women to respond faithfully to the call they hear from God without fear.

I am grateful for the first experience I had of Sunday liturgy at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, at which the first thing I noticed was a woman standing at the altar as an ordained deacon--and no one was rioting. No one even batted an eyelash (except me).

I am grateful that the presence of ordained women is normal in the Episcopal Church. I am grateful that the face of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the Presiding Bishop, is a woman (and one of great wisdom).

I am grateful for this church that perceived its own call to be prophetically transformed after eleven women stood up, risking everything that mattered to them, to respond to God's will.

I am grateful that these eleven icons of Martha made it possible for me to sit more easily, like Mary, at the feet of Jesus and hear what he has to say.

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Spirit Whispers: Signs and Wonders

6/12/2014

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Part of my spiritual practice includes lectio divina, or sacred reading. I read a few verses from scripture at a time and ponder them in order to hear God's voice speaking through them.

Today I read in the second chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, "This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."

It's so familiar from Christmastime that its oddness almost escapes notice.

Why would God's sign to the world be a just-born infant wrapped up like the dead, laid in a feeding trough for large animals?

Why would a bunch of sheep-herders run at the chance to see this so-called sign?

If you don't know that this child is destined from his birth for death, the mummy look doesn't make sense. If you don't know that by losing his life, this child will become food for all who hunger
, this doesn't make sense.

How can this bizarre telling of a child's birth make any sense without knowing the whole story that is to come?

What signs and wonders does God leave for me to see that I don't yet understand? How do I develop the imagination to see what they could mean and to strive for what God is setting in motion?


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Praying with Icons: Miriam

1/5/2014

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While on retreat with St. Augustine's Church this weekend, adults were invited to pray with an icon.  One of the mothers there had just commented that my daughter, Miriam, certainly qualified as an icon.  So I prayed with Miriam, allowing God to behold me through her.  I gave voice to my encounter in this way:



We are Godparents.
We are God's parents.
God is our child.

On the seventh day she rested because she was exhausted. She needed rest.

God needs the safety of our arms. God needs our vigilant care and protection.

God would die without us.
God grows up in our midst.

We have a critical role to play in God's destiny.

God is a child and we are her parents. Without our constant attention, she suffers.
We are her caregiver. She needs us to survive.

We are the parents of God, and she loves us implicitly.
May we never betray her love.
Our excuses not to care for her will burst like old wineskins.

She trusts that we will give her all she needs. She trusts that we will be there when she awakes. She trusts that if we put her in the arms of another, that that other will care for her just as well.

We are God's parents and we would die for her.

Her radiant smile stops time in an eternal, brilliant moment.

We feed her with good things.

We love God, for she is our own daughter, wonderfully made in our image.
Her voice causes us to laugh, dance, and run.
Her smile melts our chill anger.
Her cries alert us.

We listen when she calls.

Listen, o mother, give ear to My words.

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Gaudete! Advent, Week 3, Sunday

12/15/2013

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I made my oblation to the Benedictine Canon Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation this morning. 

You know me--I like it when timing is more than a coincidence.  The Prior of the OSBCn Community here in Tempe allowed me to schedule my oblation for the third Sunday of Advent, not only signifying a heart-opening beginning, which is what Advent is in relationship to the liturgical year, but also signifying a time of rejoicing.  The Latin Introit for this Sunday is where Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, gets its nickname:

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete. Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus: Dominus enim prope est. Nihil solliciti sitis: sed in omni oratione petitiones vestræ innotescant apud Deum. Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: avertisti captivitatem Jacob.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.

Could there be a more fitting liturgical opening on the day of my entrance into this community?

When I pray today, I find myself saying in faith, Rejoice.  Rejoice.  The Lord is near at hand.  She is near at hand, and you need have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by constant prayer, and with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to Her.  Lady, you have blessed your creation and turned us from our deadening captivity.

It is a fitting day indeed.  It is an empowering day.  Today I committed to the regular work prayer, and I find in that prayer the freedom to transcend my self-concern.  Each welcome from the members of my community was a tap-tap-tap on the still stony shell around my heart, bidding it to break free.  To stretch out my arms, to enfold sisters and brothers and neighbors in love: these are my new tasks.  What a strange gift.  What a novel reminder of my baptism.  What a poignant icon of the divine spark that finds fuel in my humanity.

I feel more fully myself today than I ever have in my life.  Here in this place, accompanied by my family, my church community, my sister and brother Benedictines, and my holy cloud of witnesses from every part of the earth and God's heavenly banquet, I am home.

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Advent 2, Monday

12/9/2013

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This past Saturday, my family hosted an Advent housewarming, and I found the wreath and berries you see to the left from Trader Joe's.  A tiny wreath and a few tea candles make the passage of Advent time more pronounced, and the faint scent of pine reminds me of home.

When I was growing up in northeast Ohio, I was surrounded by evergreens.  On Earth Day each year it was customary to receive an evergreen sapling from school to plant at home, and my family planted them.  One of the most beautiful places in Ohio to see evergreens is Quail Hollow State Park in Hartville; another is the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma.  Evergreens like those don't grow in the desert.  Instead, the thriving flora of the Sonoran desert include Mediterranean olive trees, which would have been familiar to the eyes and hands and mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.

I miss my childhood home enough to buy an evergreen wreath that isn't native to where I live.  Maybe next year I'll fashion my own wreath with olive branches and olives.  Olive branches have always been a sign of goodwill, and olive oil is a sign of majesty, healing, and nourishment.  Appropriate for the season that awaits the arrival of the majestic, healing nourisher, yes?

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My daughter's first communion

11/15/2013

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PictureSource: Wikipedia, "First Communion"
My daughter received her first communion yesterday evening. 

The thing is, she's three years old.  And she's not baptized.

A Roman Catholic child must be baptized and receive the sacrament of penance, usually around age eight, in order to receive first communion.  I remember being six or seven years old when I visited my Godmother's church, and when I went up in the communion line behind her, my Godmother told the priest that I "wasn't old enough" yet to receive, even though I desperately wanted to.  Right around that time in my life, my parents distributed communion wafers to the sick, and I remember sneaking into their room, opening the sacred case, and eating many of those wafers long before I received my "first" communion.  (Sorry, Mom and Dad!)

At my new parish, my toddler's age and catechetical development are a moot point when it comes to receiving communion.  It is enough that she has seen me receive bread and wine during liturgy and said explicitly, without any prompting, "Can I have some of that?"

That's what she said to me last Sunday after she had received a blessing from the deaconess and she saw me and others receive the bread and wine.  And as I carried her back to our pew, I whispered to her, "Yes, honey--next week you can have some of that."

Last night we took part in an evening liturgy with the St. Brigid community, a gathering of young families that meets for Eucharist and dinner afterward at St. Augustine's.  The dozen of us present there sat in a circle on mismatched sofas.  A couple of people chose to sit on pillows on the rug-laden floor.  My daughter started out cuddling close to me on the sofa and gradually worked her way down to a pillow of her own.  Readings were proclaimed by almost everyone in the circle, and as I read, my daughter sat in my lap and repeated after me.  We sang a chant together after each reading, and she sang along with us after I read.  When it came time to share of the bread, I received first, and then she did.  The bread was soft, recently baked, and tasted of honey.  I drank from the cup of wine and then helped my daughter dip a piece of bread in the cup.  She tasted the soaked bread tentatively.  I kept my hand at the ready in case she spit it out--she has pretty particular tastes.  By the time the liturgy had concluded, her morsel was gone.

I want to shout to the world that my daughter's first communion took place on November 14, 2013 in the presence of a few marvelously warm companions (literally, bread-sharers).  She didn't have to jump through sacramental or catechetical hoops first. She didn't have to dress up as a miniature bride or have posed pictures taken afterward.   Eating of the bread of life and drinking of the cup of salvation were for her the most commonplace thing in the world--and in the ordinary-ness, divine encounter took place.  My baby met God in those people, that bread, and that community's stance of radical hospitality.

When she was a couple of months old, I asked for my daughter to be enrolled in the child catechumenate at my Roman Catholic parish.  She became a catechumen, which meant that I was promising, along with my hubby and our church community, to prepare her for the opportunity to be baptized later in life, when she would be old enough to remember her baptism.  Her journey into the Christian life has continued ever since.  I don't mean that I've taught her piety (I'm pretty sure that's a long way off) or "how to be a good Catholic." If anything, I've taught her that to be religious is to learn rituals that teach her how to live in the world.  What I want her to learn, and what I think she will know in her bones by the time she's ready to choose baptism, is that she doesn't have to wait or accomplish something in order to be fed.  Jesus the Christ fed everyone who hungered, period.  If she learns what I hope she learns about the Golden Rule, then perhaps she will also decide that to be Christian, to act as Christ acted, is what she wants for her life.

At St. Augustine's, receiving the sacred bread and wine is allowed to be one's path toward baptism, rather than baptism being a necessary prerequisite for communion. I have rarely witnessed such a tangible expression of God's abundant, overflowing grace as I did last night, when my daughter was welcomed at the table, just as she was.  Whether she chooses baptism later in life or not, I hope that that lesson of radical hospitality always remains with her.  If it does, baptized or not, she will be a living icon of Christ's love.

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Thealogical: erring on the side of the feminine

11/11/2013

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PictureSaint Mary of Magdala
A few weeks ago, a woman who had visited my Facebook page sent me a private note saying that she couldn't conscientiously support my page (where I advertise myself as a writer and editor, among other things) since I had misspelled a word within my Facebook username.  The offending word?  "Thealogical."

I wrote back to her: "
'Thealogical' is an intentional spelling, not an error.  'Thea' is the Greek word for 'goddess,' and as a feminist, I choose to regard God as 'Thea' rather than 'Theo.'"

And yes, though I studied theology, I now consider myself a thealogian.  Though it looks like a misspelling, anyone who knows me knows, firstly, that I'm an outstanding speller; secondly, that I am a student of ancient Greek; and thirdly, that I am in favor of subverting patriarchal assumptions.  "Theological" may be the normative spelling, but it does not represent my "normal."  "Thealogy" may not be considered a proper subject of study, but it is precisely the study I engage in daily.  I am a thealogian.  For me, that means not that I reject male images of God, but that I embrace male and female images of God.  In my prayer, I am more comfortable addressing God as Goddess, as Mother, as Daughter, as Womb, as She and Her and Hers.  As I look at my two children I see living icons of a young Goddess.  The Christ child, in my experience, isn't a son--she is a brilliant daughter.  The Christ engaged in ministry is not a thirty-something man, in my experience, but a woman--a woman who looks surprisingly like the person in my mirror, a woman who has known the pains of childbirth and the joys of motherhood and the pleasures and comforts and struggles of an unwaveringly committed relationship.

It amazes me to look back on my Roman Catholic upbringing and see how contrary my thealogical views are to Roman Catholic teaching.  In the past, I've hidden or downplayed my feminist and inclusive inclinations, lest someone in power (or with connections to power) discover me and blow the whistle on my waywardness.

I am grateful to be moving into a Catholic tradition in which my thealogy can be treated with seriousness rather than mere suspicion.  Perhaps this seriousness is possible because the Anglo-Catholic tradition was made a people's tradition by a woman--Queen Elizabeth, specifically.  Perhaps it's possible because the current presiding Anglo-Catholic bishop of the United States is a woman--Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori
.  Perhaps it's possible simply because I'm a woman who has chosen, at long last, to speak up rather than maintain the theological status quo with her fearful silence.

In any case, I am a thealogian.  Take my spelling as a misspelling if you wish, but please don't mistake it as an unintentional one.


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    Picture

    Rev. M. Kate Allen

    Thean. House church priest. Published author. Mother and wife. Vocal feminist. Faith-filled dissenter in the face of the status quo.

    I address G-d as Thea more often than not.


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